We found the ship after a day long drive and Dora fired it up in the following. It was a fast cruiser and made the trip to Pearl Harbor in three days. After refuelling we arrived at the Port of Tokyo and a few hours drive after that brought us to what had been the most advanced robotics laboratory in the world.
We discovered on this trip that Hana had been studying for a degree in computer engineering before it had all been cut short. After a conversation with her, probing her knowledge, Ted told me she could be of great help in all the design and hardware modifications we’d be faced with once we reached the lab and he was right.
Once we had the back-up generators running the lab lit up and came to life with rows of finished robots mirroring our size and image. Dora was astonished at their life-like features but one particularly stood out for her and she claimed it as ‘the one’.
The work in this lab had been funded by a secretive Japanese tycoon and wrapped in secrecy, unknown to Dora herself. She’d only known rumors that it was far ahead of the others in developments and discoveries. When she was plugged into its data banks she began to realize that if Ted could work a few more miracles in downsizing her essentials, she would be able to fit entirely inside this robot and be her unique self, not a satellite tied to her packing trunk by a tether. She’d be able to maintain her power supply and go wherever she wanted, with computational powers much faster than the human mind and a memory immeasurably superior. This prospect galvanized all of us and focused the five of us entirely on this mission. We lived and worked in this lab for two months talking, thinking and working towards one goal, the transference of Dora into this human-like frame, freeing her from her hated box forever.
The day came when we she was ready to have her bios transplanted into the beautiful head. Burt and Ernie once again went dormant, this time forever. They hadn’t been much help all along. Most days we just instructed them to stay out of the way, which they did like some doorman in a posh hotel, unseen until needed. Like the droids at the hive in Emeryville she no longer had any use for them. She was slendering down, discarding all the extra baggage that had tied her to one place which was susceptible to the ravages of passing storms and time. Now she was free of all shackles, the same that had kept her droids chained to providing her many needs in that cumbersome shape. We didn’t lament their demise. In a sense death liberated their tiny minds also.
It was a wonder to see the exhilaration in Dora’s face when she opened her eyes for the first time. There was a gleam in them that said it all. She was lying on the operating table and slowly lifted one arm towards her face, to admire her hand. Then she carefully lifted herself off her bed, swung her legs and stood motionless, standing. She took her first step, looked down at her feet and said: “this is wonderful. I can move.”
She crossed the floor in front of us. Next she bowed and touched her toes in one smooth flow of motion. She began to tip toe like a ballerina in glee, she did a pirouette then clasped one ankle in her hand, waving her other arm out gracefully for balance, turning her face towards us and smiling broadly just as a dancer would after a performance at a curtain call.
I was the last that she turned her eyes to and when they met mine she dropped her foot suddenly and stepped towards me. Placing her arm around my neck she gave me an embrace, a long and sensual one, a lambent kiss. I felt her tongue licking the saliva in my mouth to moisten her own lips, which she puckered and then separated from mine with a pop. She did this in front of all the others. It was an unexpected and unforgettable kiss, a perfect kiss from a perfect mouth.
That was the greatest miracle of all, her face. Some genius scientist had created her skin out of diaphanous molecules that could flow and change colors at her command, allowing her to assume any appearance she wanted. She could continually vary its contours and every inch of it held a thousand tactile sensors that rendered it a sensuous and sensitive skin aching to be caressed, giving and responding beyond belief, a lifelike skin.
As I experienced this warm embrace it all became clear. The billionaire who built this lab and lavished so much research and money on this model before me had only one thing in mind, the crafting of a perfect female avatar, the ultimate love machine and now Dora was inside it, kissing me.
